After spending the last couple years online Microsoft looked at how to make the online meeting a more personal experience for hybrid meetings.
In a traditional meeting space, we aren’t all stacked on top of each other therefore adding a video gallery at the bottom of the screen where remote participants are all at the same eye level makes it feel like everyone is in the same room and creates a more natural meeting environment.
The chat bar was also noted as a critical part of online meetings and so they moved it upfront on the main screen so that everyone could know what is going on and have immediate access.
The raised hand also moved up front to make it clear that you want to participate and have your voice heard in the meeting.
Additional features to be introduced will include placing all online meeting participants in a segmented view or on a similar background. The second addition is called loop, for live note taking and action items. But one of the most innovative in our opinion is called positional audio. When we hear somebody talk, we will now be able to distinguish which way to look on screen to identify who is speaking. Learn more about front row in this video: https://youtu.be/RVEZtt2xePU
